Maria Taylor ‘thankful and grateful’ for Rachel Nichols saga

The leaked comments from Rachel Nichols may not have been the highlight of Maria Taylor’s career five years ago, but she’s still grateful for going through it.

Taylor was this week’s guest on Andrew Marchand’s sports media podcast, where the NBC Sports broadcaster spoke about her media career, which includes the saga with Nichols near the end of their tenures with ESPN.

In 2021, an audio clip of Nichols was leaked, in which she privately implied Taylor was assigned to host the 2020 NBA Finals because she is Black, citing “diversity reasons.” The private conversation was taken from a video camera that was in Nichols hotel room while on site for the 2020 NBA Finals in the Orlando bubble.

After the audio was leaked more than a year later, Nichols did quickly offer a direct apology to Taylor during an episode of ESPN’s The Jump. Six years later, Marchand asked Taylor how she looks back at that entire ordeal with Nichols.

“I think my main takeaway is just super thankful and grateful,” Taylor told Marchand. “Basically, once you go through an adversity or a trial or something, you don’t understand why it’s happening at the time. But now looking back, I’m like, ‘Wow, it was all for the good.’ I’m not working the Olympics or doing some of the things that I have the opportunity to do now, if not for that literal moment in time. And so that’s kind of how I look back on it now. It was all a part of the plan, and my steps were ordered from the very, very beginning.

“I don’t wish away any part of my story. And I truly believe, as we were going through my story, it sounds very improbable anyway. Doesn’t it just sound like, ‘Oh, and then you did this and it was glorious. And then you did that.’ You’re supposed to have a challenge! You’re supposed to miss a shot. You know what I mean? You can’t have a perfect game. And so that was the part that was the part of the imperfect portion of my career, the hurdle I had to overcome in order to be where I’m sitting right now.”

Here’s the full quote from Nichols about Taylor that was recorded in 2020 and leaked during the summer of 2021:

“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world, she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols said. “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I myself know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You’re not going to find it from me and taking my thing away.”

In her apology, Nichols expressed “how deeply, deeply sorry I am for disappointing those I hurt, particularly Maria Taylor.”

While the apology seemed sincere at the time, it wasn’t enough to save her job at ESPN. The network canceled her daily show The Jump later that summer and removed her from all NBA responsibilities. Nichols left ESPN the following January after settling with the network.

Taylor left ESPN just a few weeks after the audio was leaked. She was in contract negotiations at the time. She ultimately left ESPN for NBC Sports, where she continues as their lead studio host for NBA, WNBA, and NFL coverage, and contributes to the Olympics and most other major sporting events on the network.

The post Maria Taylor ‘thankful and grateful’ for Rachel Nichols saga appeared first on Awful Announcing.